Source: The New York Times
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Women danced in the rain by the Brooklyn Bridge.
By SEWELL CHAN and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: August 3, 2006
As a heat wave neared the end of its stultifying journey through the Northeast, tens of thousands of customers lost power today in scattered failures from the Bronx to Stamford, Conn. But utility officials narrowly averted a wider blackout on the East Side of Manhattan as a third day of high demand strained the electrical grid to its breaking point.
While residents of the region waited for cooler temperatures to arrive overnight, the human toll of the heat wave became apparent, with at least three deaths linked to the weather: a couple who died in their Newark apartment, and a man found unconscious on the Brooklyn waterfront.
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A man and his pet received a ration of water Wednesday
at a park in Philadelphia, where the temperature
reached 97 degrees, typical of many cities.
Temperatures remained brutal. The National Weather Service reported record highs for the date at La Guardia Airport (99 degrees), Kennedy International Airport (99) and Newark Liberty International Airport (100). Records were also set in Islip, N.Y., at 98 degrees, and Bridgeport, Conn., at 97. The temperature in Central Park reached 96, which was short of a record.
The Long Island Power Authority reported that power consumption records had been set for the third day in a row, and that 91,016 customers had lost power at some point Tuesday or Wednesday. Connecticut Light and Power shut off electricity to 5,000 customers, across much of downtown Stamford, around noon yesterday.
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In Washington, 4-year-old Makai Brooks used
a fire hydrant to beat the heat.
Consolidated Edison faced its greatest risk of a power failure since the nine-day blackout in western Queens last month, after a series of manhole fires and explosions this morning in the Gramercy Park neighborhood in Manhattan. In the two electrical networks that make up that area, high-voltage feeder cables began to fail.
In the early afternoon, 7 of the 36 were out of action, threatening the power supply to a broad section of the East Side, from East 14th to East 40th Street, and from Fifth Avenue to the East River. By nightfall, most of the cables were fixed.
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At the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, patrons were
drawn indoors by the seals, and the
air-conditioning.
To take some pressure off its equipment, the company reduced the voltage customers received by 5 to 8 for parts of the day, in all of Brooklyn and Queens and parts of Manhattan. The utility took the extraordinary step of moving its own headquarters, at 4 Irving Place near Union Square, off the electrical grid and onto generator power, and having crews race door to door on the East Side, urging businesses and residents to shut off power.
The city medical examiner’s office was evacuated because of smoke from a Con Edison transformer that caught fire. It lost electricity for about five hours and had to use emergency generators to keep its refrigerated morgue between 32 to 40 degrees. Several bodies scheduled for autopsies were moved to Queens.
One of those bodies was an unidentified man, believed to be in his early 30’s, who was found unconscious along the piers near the mouth of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. He was pronounced dead at Maimonides Medical Center at 6:40 p.m. on Wednesday. The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said that the man appeared to be a victim of heat stroke and that alcohol, which exacerbates dehydration, might have been a factor in his death.
The extent of the public’s search for relief could be measured on Wednesday through the 425,000 visitors who crowded the city’s beaches, twice as many as on Tuesday; the 300 million more gallons of water than usual that were consumed; and the 30,000 people entered “cooling centers” set up around the city. The city’s Emergency Medical Service had its sixth-busiest-day ever on Wednesday, fielding 4,063 calls, 20 percent higher than usual.
Although 911 calls have been up 7 percent since the start of the heat wave, major crimes were down 12 percent from the same period a year earlier, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. “Maybe the bad guys just don’t go out when it gets hot,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg quipped.
Con Edison’s chief executive, Kevin M. Burke, who testified before the City Council about the blackout in western Queens on Monday, found himself facing angry lawmakers again today — this time at a State Assembly hearing at LaGuardia Community College.
In a development that surprised the Assembly members and observers, William M. Flynn, the chairman of the state’s Public Service Commission, which is investigating the blackout, criticized Con Edison as being uncooperative.
“We’re off on the wrong foot as far as I’m concerned with Con Ed,” Mr. Flynn said. “The first time that they’ve given information to us was unresponsive and useless to us.” Describing himself as “even more skeptical” than when he opened the investigation last month, Mr. Flynn said, “With every word that they give us from now on, we’re going to go back and verify for its veracity.”
The problems today on the East Side began around 8:30 a.m. with a series of manhole fires: at 30th Street and First Avenue, 29th Street and Lexington Avenue, and 24th Street and Third Avenue, among other intersections.
By midday, four of the 12 feeders in the Kips Bay network — serving 24,000 customers from East 30th to East 40th Streets, from Madison Avenue to the river — had failed, as well as three of the 24 feeders in the Madison Square network, which serves 29,000 customers from East 14th to East 30th Streets, from Fifth Avenue to the river.
Beth Israel Medical Center canceled afternoon elective surgeries at its ambulatory care center on Union Square, while NYU Medical Center shut down an office building at One Park Avenue and sent the employees home.
Baruch College shut off power to three of its six buildings at the utility’s request and canceled all classes today.
While lauding dozens of organizations that have reduced their energy consumption, Mr. Bloomberg singled out Peter Cooper Village and Stuvyesant Town, the sprawling twin housing developments along the East River, for praise. Its management shut all laundry rooms and half of the elevators in the complex and visited all 11,000 apartments to alert residents to reduce power.
On Third Avenue near 30th Street, Maureen Downs bought herself a 16-inch fan in the hope that the faint pulse of electricity in her apartment would be enough to coax its blades to life. “No air conditioning since last night,” Ms. Downs said, her hair clinging damply to her head. “I was a bag of sweat.”
Tino Hernandez, chairman of the city’s Housing Authority, said a temporary 5 percent voltage reduction and scattered outages caused problems for 289 elevators in 228 buildings.
At one 19-story building, part of the Nathan Straus Houses at Second Avenue and 27th Street, the elevator stopped mid-morning. One wheelchair user, Tony Figaro, 43, was carrieed down four flights so he could make a dialysis appointment.
Bartolo Cruz, 89, took the stairs down from his 12th-floor apartment but collapsed when he got to the lobby, and was taken to the hospital for exhaustion. “He had angioplasty two weeks ago,” said his daughter, Nancy Ramos, as he was lifted into an ambulance. “This is just ridiculous.”
A stretch of East 194th Street, in the Fordham section of the Bronx, has had little or no power for days. Con Edison said that several hundred customers — a few thousand people — were affected. Wilfred Morett, 65, said his six-story apartment building was stifling that he spent Wednesday night on the fire escape. Mr. Morett, who uses a cane and moves slowly, said it took him half an hour to get up or down the stairs. “Seven days is too much,” he said. “I’m afraid for my health.”
[I]Richard Pérez-Peña and Sewell Chan contributed reporting for this article.[/I] |
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发表于 2006-7-30 17:31:30
